Category: Ivy League

Top NYC Players: 20-16

This is part two of this week’s series about the Top 25 players in the New York metro area. You can read part 1, which has an explanation and players 21-25, here.

20. Isaiah Wilkerson, NJIT — The Great West’s Player of the Year doesn’t get a lot of recognition, but he’s a unique player that did more than just score for the Highlanders, who finished 15-17 this season. Wilkerson averaged 16.2 points, 6.6 rebounds and 1.8 steals per game for NJIT this season. The rebounding is remarkable considering Wilkerson is a 6’3″ guard. I adjusted Wilkerson’s numbers for the strength of NJIT’s schedule and he still ranked amongst the elites in almost every category. Like many of the better known players on this list he was an efficient, high usage player. NJIT almost advanced to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament, but fell to North Dakota 75-60 in the final. Wilkerson scored 19 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in the loss.

19. Bryan Dougher, Stony Brook — A four-year starter under Steve Pikiell, Dougher and the Seawolves couldn’t quite get over the hump and into the NCAA tournament. The senior from Scotch Plains, NJ saw his usage drop slightly this season, but he numbers in general improved and he became a key offensive component for SBU. Dougher averaged 13.2 points per game and shot 36% from beyond the arc. Dougher scored 20 points on just nine shots from the field (and 7-8 free throw shooting) in a 66-57 win over Boston University midway through the America East campaign. Unfortunately he struggled a bit in his last America East game, shooting 2-12 from the field and scoring eight points in SBU’s loss to Vermont in the finals.

18. Douglas Davis, Princeton — Like Dougher, Davis is one of those players that seems like he’s been around forever. Turns out that’s because he sort of has. Davis played at least 30 minutes per game in each of his four season for the Tigers. During his senior campaign he upped his scoring average to 13.8 points per game and shot 42% from three and 83% from the foul line. By the time his career was over Davis had scored the second most points in Princeton history. It’s his outstanding senior season that put him over the top.

17. Jamal Olasewere, LIU Brooklyn — Olasewere had a breakthrough junior season. He improved in almost every category and in the process turned the Blackbirds into a more dynamic offensive team. In just 26 minutes per game Olaswere scored 16.9 points and grabbed 7.5 rebounds. He shot 57% from the field overall and 34% from three. Occassionally he had a few too many turnovers, often related to offensive fouls on difficult drives to the basket, but there’s an argument to be made that was also LIU’s most dynamic offensive player. That never proved more true than when he scored 32 points on a perfect 11-11 from the field in the Battle of Brooklyn against St. Francis (NY). It was one of 10 games in which the 6’7″ junior scored 20 points or more.

16. Reggie Willhite, Yale — There’s another Bulldog coming up later in this countdown, but Willhite deserves a lot of recognition. The 6’4″ swingman was a defensive menace, playmaker and an incredibly complete basketball player for Yale this season. He averaged 12.1 points, 6.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.2 steals per game in 31.9 minutes. Willhite particularly killed Columbia, scoring 24 and 20 points in two victories over the Lions. He also scored 20 points in a four-point win over Princeton and 23 in a two-point win over Sacred Heart. On a team with no true point guard it was Willhite that sometimes had to make the plays that got other teammates open shots. It’s his defense though that puts him over the top. Willhite ranked 29th in the nation in steal rate at 4.2% and was named the Ivy League’s Defensive Player of the Year.

Check back tomorrow as I count down 15-11 and the Big East gets into the act.

Season At A Glance — Columbia

This is the third of what will eventually be capsules for each of the NYC teams when I’m sure their season has concluded.

Team: Columbia

Record: 15-15 (4-10 in the Ivy League)

Season High: Sweeping round-robin at Loyola Marymount

Season Low: Losing at Brown 94-68

Really Good At: Defensive Rebounding — Columbia was strong on the defensive glass all season thanks to the efforts of Mark Cisco, John Daniels and Blaise Staab. They were first in the Ivy League during conference play in defensive rebounding and 20th in the country overall.

Struggled With: The rest of defense — A defense that looked very strong in non-conference play struggled during Ivy League play. The Lions failed to force turnovers or prevent opponents from getting to the line and it resulted in the second worst defense in the league during conference play.

Key Losses:

  • Matt Johnson (defensive stopper that started a few early season games)
  • Blaise Staab (quality rebounder and strong body in the paint)
  • Chris Crockett (three-point specialist and extra ball handler off the bench)
  • Steve Egee (captain and played with a lot of heart, was third on team in DR%)

Key Returnees:

  • Brian Barbour, Jr., G (All-Ivy quality point guard, 15.5 PPG, 4.5 APG)
  • Noruwa Agho, Sr., G (played only two games due to knee injury)
  • Mark Cisco, Jr., C (10 PPG, 7.2 RPG)
  • Meiko Lyles, So., G (10.6 PPG, 43.9% from three)

Key Quotes:

“Meiko being able to play 30-plus minutes a game is important. Barbour going through two years of playing that way it’s important. … We’ve got a little more experience that should help.” — Kyle Smith

“It definitely gives us some confidence. Going into this year we hadn’t really had a taste of being in games and being competitive in a couple games. We have experience now. That always helps.” — Brian Barbour

“We have high expectations going into next year. Not many people would go 4-10 and be excited for next year, but I think with this team it’s going to be a very good year for us.” — Barbour

Outlook: Good. There are reasons for Columbia fans to be excited for 2012-13. First of all most of the talent will return. Better yet it’ll be complemented by some players that are talented in their own right. Adding Steve Frankoski and Noruwa Agho to the base built up this season should give Kyle Smith a deep rotation next season. The question becomes can this team get tougher? Can it win the close games? Some of that is luck, but some of it is finding a way to get the best shot possible under two minutes, making free throws and locking down defensively. Still, it’s possible that Brian Barbour and Mark Cisco could both be All-Ivy performers next season. Meiko Lyles gives Columbia a third option and with a year of experience Alex Rosenberg, Cory Osetowski and Noah Springwater should be able to provide help off the bench. How does Agho integrate back into the rotation? What happens with a healthy Frankoski? Those are good questions for Smith to have to deal with next season.

Columbia finishes out season on high note

It wouldn’t have fit into Columbia’s season if it wasn’t close, so the Lions let Dartmouth hang around for 38 minutes before two big threes from Brian Barbour and Meiko Lyles finished off the Big Green.

“It’s crazy. I thought we played a tough game and we couldn’t get away from them,” said Columbia head coach Kyle Smith. “You look at the box score it just looks like we played an unbelievable game and we barely could get it done.”

Columbia shot 7-15 from three, had 14 assists to eight turnovers and held Dartmouth to 1-11 from distance, but still had to come up with some big shots down the stretch because of some little things. Things like missing the front end of a 1-and-1 and shooting 12-18 from the line overall as a team.

Those are the types of things that make Columbia’s final record of 15-15 and 4-10 in the Ivy League so deceiving. The Lions were in all but two games this season in league play, they just had trouble closing games out. Going all the way back to the first weekend of league play against Penn and Princeton up until Friday night’s overtime loss to Harvard, Columbia found lots of ways to lose nail biters.

That’s also why this group, which loses four seniors from the rotation but no key parts, has so much to look forward to. A year of development for Lyles, Cisco and Barbour and the freshman can only pay dividends moving forward. Noruwa Agho, who wasn’t honored at Senior Night as Columbia hopes his waiver request for another season will be approved, could also rejoin the Lions along with Steve Frankoski. Put it all together and there should be talent and depth throughout the roster.

Hopefully another year of experience will help with all the close games.

“I don’t know how to coach that out of us, but we’re going to get that out,” said Smith about Columbia’s tendency to let opponents get back into games. “I don’t know what it is, just have to be a little tougher probably, a little grittier.”

But on Saturday night it was all about the current group of seniors. Smith started the four seniors that were honored at Levien and they held down the fort along with Barbour for the first four minutes of the game. The set up led to Columbia getting 44 points of the bench.

“I was excited to start the seniors because it could also shorten the game,” Smith said. “I could get them four, five minutes instead of trying to fit them in. I thought it would give some of the other guys a little blow.”

Fan favorite Steve Egee played 17 minutes, scored four points and grabbed four rebounds.

“It’s great to go out on a win like that,” Egee said. “We’ve had some tough losses in league. To get a win to end the season and especially the four seniors’ careers, it’s really something special. I thought everybody played tough tonight.”

Lyles finished with 23 points and Mark Cisco had 15 points and nine boards. Barbour finished his junior campaign with nine points, five assists and one turnover in 36 minutes.

“I’m glad we go it done for [the seniors] to send them out on a good note. They work harder than anybody,” Lyles said.

Jvonte Brooks led Dartmouth with 17 points, including 9-10 shooting from the free throw line. His physical play down low forced both Cisco and Corey Osetkowski into foul trouble. Osetkowski committed four fouls in 13 minutes. Cisco fouled out after 30 minutes.

It ended in a win

Game #8-770: Dartmouth Big Green at Columbia Lions

March 3, 2012 7:00 pm
Levien Gym
BBState Stats/Recap

Seasons don’t have to end in a loss. At least not one on the court. The Ivy League proves it each season. On the final Saturday of the season half of the league had a chance to finish the regular season with a victory. Columbia, which was playing Dartmouth, had one of the best chances.

It was Senior Night and after a long Ivy League season in which Columbia had redefined the meaning of gut-wrenching loss the Lions had to refocus. They’d lost to Harvard the night before by the slimmest of margins. It was a chance to do something epic in front of a packed house and national media. The game went to overtime. Columbia lost by seven in the extra session.

That meant Saturday was also an opportunity to redeem the season a little bit. With a win Kyle Smith’s team could still finish .500 on the season. Considering that all but a few players would be coming back, it’d be a way to gain some momentum for 2012-13.

Why were they already looking towards next season Well, in the Ivy League there’s no conference tournament. It’s the only league where you can’t earn your way into the NCAA tournament during a crazy week in March. To be honest, I’m okay with that. They’re thinking about changing it. It’d be the wrong decision.

Because right now a season can end in a win, which is exactly what happened in Levien Gym that night. Chris Crockett, Steve Egee, Matt Johnson and Blaise Staab received their plaques and were thanked for their service to the school. Then the four of them started the game. It was a nice gesture and in Smith’s words it was also a way to “shorten the game” for the rest of the rotation after the grueling marathon against the Crimson 24 hours earlier.

Understandably, Columbia started off slow. Egee, Johnson and Staab had earned their playing time during the season from their defensive prowess. Crockett is a shooter, but he was 1-4 from the field. At the end of the half it was 23-22 Lions.

Then in the second half a sophomore, Meiko Lyles, went off. The shots started going down and he scored 20 of his 23 points in the final 20 minutes. He finished 8-12 from the field and 5-6 from three-point line. Thanks to Lyle’s three-point shooting, and 7-15 overall from beyond the arc, the Lions took home a 61-55 victory.

The season ended in a win for Columbia, but it ended. At 15-15 (4-10) there would be no postseason, not even a ghost tournament, for the Lions. The season might not have ended with a loss on the court, but it did end with that feeling of emptiness. The thing they’d work hard for since October and before had come to a close.

Afterwards the players that came to speak with the media were an interesting mix of emotions. Egee joked about how he was the first Columbia player ever invited to a press conference after scoring four points. They all seemed pleased. That moment on March 3, 2012 wasn’t time for reflecting. (It wasn’t time to look ahead either, even though a pesky blogger kept asking about it.) It was time to enjoy one final victory.

I don’t know what has happened during the past two weeks, but I’ve seen countless seasons end in a loss during that time. I’ve wondered how it changes a team’s feelings about the season. Does being able to savor the last result make everything seem a little bit sweeter Or does it make you wonder, “What could’ve been” I guess it probably depends on the player, the team and the moment.

But for a few teams it didn’t have to end in a loss on the court. Instead, the feeling of loss was something bigger, it was finality.

at COLUMBIA 61, DARTMOUTH 55
03/03/2012

DARTMOUTH 5-25 (1-13)– J. Golden 0-5 0-0 0; G. Maldunas 2-9 6-8 10; J. Brooks 4-5 9-10 17; D. Rufful 2-5 0-1 4; R. Griffin 3-5 5-6 12; T. Melville 3-6 0-0 6; J. Trotter 2-5 0-0 4; M. LaBove 1-2 0-0 2; K. Crecco 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 17-42 20-25 55.

COLUMBIA 15-15 (4-10)– B. Barbour 2-6 4-4 9; M. Lyles 8-12 2-2 23; M. Cisco 7-10 1-5 15; C. Crockett 1-4 1-2 4; J. Daniels 1-2 4-5 6; S. Egee 2-4 0-0 4; C. Osetkowski 0-2 0-0 0; A. Rosenberg 0-4 0-0 0; M. Johnson 0-0 0-0 0; B. Staab 0-2 0-0 0. Totals 21-46 12-18 61.

Three-point goals: DART 1-11 (J. Trotter 0-2; D. Rufful 0-2; R. Griffin 1-2; T. Melville 0-2; J. Golden 0-3), COLU 7-15 (C. Crockett 1-3; S. Egee 0-2; B. Staabq 0-1; B. Barbour 1-2; M. Lyles 5-6; A. Rosenberg 0-1); Rebounds: DART 25 (J. Brooks 7), COLU 31 (M. Cisco 9); Assists: DART 6 (G. Maldunas 2), COLU 14 (B. Barbour 5); Total Fouls — DART 21, COLU 20; Fouled Out: DART-None; COLU-M. Cisco.

Updated Ivy and MAAC races

In case you’re not following me on Twitter. (Why not?)

Ivy League: Harvard now at 98% to at least share the title. ~92% outright. Penn ~1.1% outright. Princeton/Yale/Cornell alive, but tiny.

MAAC: There were 4,043 ties in 10,000 seasons. Iona a slight favorite (72.1% to at least tie) over Loyola (MD) (63.7%). Manhattan and Fairfield with life.

First half fireworks lead Columbia past Brown

Even before the game started it was going to be an uphill battle for Brown at Levien Gymnasium. Leading scorer and the team heartbeat Sean McGonagill was unable to play due to injury and the Bears have no way to replace him.

Overmatched Brown tried to pack it in against Mark Cisco, play slowly and hope the Lions missed their shots – and boy did that backfire. The Lions shot 11-18 from three in the first half and put on a dominating performance on the way to an 86-60 victory on Saturday night.

“We played really well,” said Columbia head coach Kyle Smith. “When that happens it’s fun for a coach.”

Columbia (14-9, 3-4) played its best offense of the season in the first half on the way to 47 points in 29 possessions (1.62 points per possession). Not until 16 minutes into the game did  the Lions committed their first turnover of the half, on a travel by John Daniels after a rebound, and they’d already collected 11 of their 16 first half assists.

It was the shooting of Brian Barbour (2-3), Meiko Lyles (5-7) and Chris Crockett (3-5) from three that drove the offense forward in the first half. Barbour found ways to be a creative playmaker. Recognizing that Brown didn’t have a player who could stay in front of him Barbour drove and kicked to teammates on the perimeter and finished with eight assists in the first 20 minutes. Barbour finished with a career-high nine assists in the game and 16 points in just 25 minutes.

“He’s been really developing as a point guard,” Smith said about Barbour. “We had to add some ways to score. Sometimes it takes time. We added it six weeks, hopefully we’re seeing the result of it and gave ourselves a little more chance.”

Crockett scored a career-high 18 points on 6-10 three-point shooting for the game and Lyles added 17. Cisco played only 18 minutes, but he scored 10 points and grabbed five boards.

“Shots went in,” Crockett said. “My guys found me. We pretty much played within the offense and it was perfect. There wasn’t a lot of one-on-one. There was a lot of ball movement and we knocked shots down.”

Coming into the game Columbia had struggled shooting the three both in Ivy League play at home, the Lions bucked both of those trends in one game, tying a season-high with 16 threes.

“It was frustrating,” Crockett said. “We knew that these shots would fall eventually. Unfortunately we had to get a couple losses, but now that they are falling it does feel great and hopefully that can carry over to the next three home games.”

Brown (7-17, 1-6) head coach Jesse Agel tried to stem the tide, but with a depleted roster that includes just nine healthy players there wasn’t much he could do. Even when his team made a smart play, such as fouling late in the final Columbia possession before half, it backfired. Barbour’s acrobatic layup gave the Lions a 23-point lead at the break.

The Lions didn’t let up during the second half either. The threes kept coming and Columbia got the lead out to as many as 33 points before Brown was able to stem the tide. The Bears did shoot well from three, hitting 10-19, but they also shot 14-43 inside the arc. Matt Sullivan led Brown with 17 points on 6-11 shooting, including 4-6 from three.

Harvard in control of the Ivy League

Harvard at Penn is a big game. A huge game by Ivy League standards, but here’s the fact of the matter. Even if the Quakers win, the Ivy League will still be the Crimsons’ to lose. In order to figure out what might happen I simulated 10,000 seasons with the current results and standings. Then I simulated 10,000 assuming Harvard won the game at the Palestra on Friday night and then 10,000 seasons assuming Penn won the game. The difference? About 10% or so. Basically this is Penn’s chance to just stay alive a little longer.

Continue reading “Harvard in control of the Ivy League” →

SGOTW: Columbia vs. Cornell

Most of the Ivy League likes to get their home-and-home series between travel partners done early in the season. Thus on Saturday Cornell and Columbia will meet for the second time in as many games. This time the game is in Ithica, New York. The Big Red already beat Princeton at home, so they’re obviously dangerous and they’ll be looking to get revenge for the Lions’ 61-56 victory exactly a week ago. I asked The Cornell Basketball Blog to answer some questions about the team before the game to prepare for the epic rematch.

Continue reading “SGOTW: Columbia vs. Cornell” →